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"May There Be Mercy on Man and Machine for Their Sins"

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Yeah, yeah. It's late in the day and Friday too, which means there's a news dump I should be reading about. But all this posting on how depressed I am has driven me to throw in the pop video moment for this week. Although the videos I'm posting here are not the ones I'll shortly be watching, I thought I'd share some of my favorites. Sometimes, I foolishly assume readers here have seen every video and movie I have, so I'm curious to hear your reactions, those of you to whom this is new.

Forget the Matrix movies for a second, and concetrate on just these two pieces. Here's how they struck me: "Man" = the West, "machine" = third world and oppressed (brown) people living in those places that have oil and other natural resources that make our Western lives comfy, and the "Second Renaissance" a metaphor for what will happen when our neo-liberal economic system comes crashing down around our ears. Note how the "machines" learn and respond to threats to themselves, exponentially, as "we" apply greater and more powerful military technologies to defeat them. Remind you of anyplace?

It's a thought, no? How do you think it would feel to have ravening hoards of Others literally stripping you of your body's energy, after you've been a part of the system that destroyed the environment, sucked dry the last energy resource, and hypocritically denied Other voices from having a place in the decision making process because of your racism? There is so much here in these little vignettes; pop culture usually fails to accomplish much, but these have become more powerful to me over the years since they were released.

Part One:

and Part Two:

Gotta love the (still, mostly) free Intertubes, which allow me to share a moment in corporate-produced product that only my boy Herbert Marcuse could explain in a way that makes sense. The technocracy that absorbs and crushes the protestor as a legitimizing yet powerless function(ary) of the order, etc...

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POTL, n. People Of The Lie. Coined by Christian psychiatrist and theologian <a href="http://www.mscottpeck.com/">M. Scott Peck</a> in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684848597/qid=1072031672/... People of the Lie</a>, which is, among other things, an examination of the nature of human evil. Peck quotes Martin Buber: <blockquote> Since the primary motive of evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. </blockquote> Additional excerpts can be found <a href="http://members.tripod.com/ejm/people.htm">here</a>. "Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words "image", "appearance" and "outwardly" are crucial to understanding the morality of 'the evil'. While they lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is in effect a lie. Actually the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. At one and the same time 'the evil' are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness." Peck's material, I feel, has great potential for analyzing and deconstructing the nature and behavior of the wing of the Republican party that has captured our government. With the caveats, that Peck raises, that evil is very dangerous to analyze--since we are, after all, all vulnerable to it.

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Beyond war, inflation, the end of the technology/productivity wave, and financial collapse, we think the most potent and short-term threat would be societies demanding a more ‘equitable’ share of wealth."

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